Patient safety and quality care are not new to healthcare workers. After the introduction of Affordable Care Act into the health care system these words have gained increased importance in healthcare industry because, now the payments and incentives are focusing on value of service and patient outcomes. Nursing care has a major role in value of care and patient outcomes. Safe staffing is a crucial key to safeguard patient safety and optimum care as nurses are in the front line to provide patient care. Nurse leaders in United States have been working hard for many years to put this idea into effect. Safe staffing was an impossible solution until some states started to implement safe staffing in hospitals. There are two national safe patient ratio bills in front of our policy makers to take favorable decision.
Evidences to support safe staffing
Nurses in United states have been raising concerns related to inadequate staffing for nursing care for decades. California is the first state which implemented minimum nurse to patient staffing requirement in U.S nursing history. Researchers have done many studies regarding the safe staffing solution. One of the famous study was conducted by researchers in Pennsylvania university. It compared the outcomes of California’s nurse patient ratio with New Jersey and Pennsylvania’s nurse patient ratio where safe staffing plan was not implemented. That study has shown some remarkable evidences to support the safe staffing proposal in nursing profession. According to that study 29 percent of nurses in California reported burnout, compared with 36 percent of nurses in Pennsylvania and 34 percent of nurses in New Jersey, states without safe staffing strategies. The study revealed that 20 percent of nur...
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...atient safety and offer a balanced approach for adequate staffing for quality patient care and safety ("Congress.Gov," 2015).
Recommendation
Incorporating safe staffing plan into healthcare industry and taking measures to retain nurses in nursing profession are helpful. Allowing federal grants and funds to nursing schools and colleges to improve current nursing school facilities and attracting more student nurses to the profession can solve nurse shortage issue to implement better staffing plan. Encouraging nurses to obtain professional certifications to improve skills and to go for higher studies are useful. Empowering nurses and spreading the value and importance of nurses through media to get a positive image of nurses among public are other recommendations. In addition to the above recommendations, most important is to enact the two bills already in Congress.
In the case of nurse staffing, the more nurses there are the better outcome of patient safety. When there enough staff to handle the number of patients, there is a better quality of care that can be provided. The nurses would be able to focus on the patients, monitor the conditions closely, performs assessments as they should, and administer medications on time. There will be a reduction in errors, patient complications, mortality, nurse fatigue and nurse burnout (Curtan, 2016). While improving patient satisfaction and nurse job satisfaction. This allows the principle of non-maleficence, do no harm, to be carried out correctly. A study mentioned in Scientific America showed that after California passed a law in 2014 to regulate hospital staffing and set a minimum of nurse to patient ratios, there was an improvement in patient care. Including lower rates of post-surgery infection, falls and other micro emergencies in hospitals (Jacobson,
Nurses are key components in health care. Their role in today’s healthcare system goes beyond bedside care, making them the last line of defense to prevent negative patient outcomes (Sherwood & Zomorodi, 2014). As part of the interdisciplinary team, nurses have the responsibility to provide the safest care while maintaining quality. In order to meet this two healthcare system demands, the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) project defined six competencies to be used as a framework for future and current nurses (Sherwood & Zomorodi, 2014). These competencies cover all areas of nursing practice: patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality
Shekelle, P. (2013). Nurse-patient ratios as a patient safety strategy. 158, 404-409. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com
Safety is a primary concern in the health care environment, but there are still many preventable errors that occur. In fact, a study from ProPublica in 2013 found that between 210,000 and 440,000 patients each year suffer preventable harm in the hospital (Allen, 2013). Safety in the healthcare environment is not only keeping the patient safe, but also the employee. If a nurse does not follow procedure, they could bring harm to themselves, the patient, or both. Although it seems like such a simple topic with a simple solution, there are several components to what safety really entails. Health care professionals must always be cautious to prevent any mishaps to their patients, especially when using machines or lifting objects, as it has a higher
Safety is focused on reducing the chance of harm to staff and patients. The 2016 National Patient Safety Goals for Hospitals includes criteria such as using two forms of identification when caring for a patient to ensure the right patient is being treated, proper hand washing techniques to prevent nosocomial infections and reporting critical information promptly (Joint Commission, 2015). It is important that nurses follow standards and protocols intending to patients to decrease adverse
O’Daniel, M., & A.H., R. (2008). Patient Safety and Quality: An Evidence-Based Handbook for Nurses. Rockville: Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Retrieved from: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK2637/
The United States offers some of the most established and advanced health care in the world. Practitioners and administers are constantly trying to improve the quality of care received by patients in the US. Data has consistently shown that the presence of a registered nurse contributes directly to positive patient outcomes (Cho et al., 2016). The debate across the country, however, concerns the precise number of staff required to provide safe, high-quality care. The issue of safe staffing is one that is of great importance to all involved in the delivery of health care across the country.
The Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN’s) goal is to prepare future nurses with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSAs) that are needed to continuously improve the quality and safety of the healthcare systems within which they work. QSEN focuses on six main competencies; patient-centered care, teamwork and collaboration, evidence-based practice, quality improvement, safety, and informatics. As we have learned in earlier classes these competencies and their KSAs offer a base to help us and other nurses as we continue our education and become RNs. As we will learn in this class these KSAs go hand in hand with health assessment.
Patient’s safety will be compromised because increase of patient to nurse ratio will lead to mistakes in delivering quality care. In 2007, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) conducted a metanalysis and found that “shortage of registered nurses, in combination with increased workload, poses a potential threat to the quality of care… increases in registered nurse staffing was associated with a reduction in hospital-related mortality and failure to rescue as well as reduced length of stay.” Intense workload, stress, and dissatisfaction in one’s profession can lead to health problems. Researchers found that maintaining and improving a healthy work environment will facilitate safety, quality healthcare and promote a desirable professional avenue.
Thousands of nurses throughout the nation are exhausted and overwhelmed due to their heavy workload. The administrators do not staff the units properly; therefore, they give each nurse more patients to care for to compensate for the lack of staff. There are several reasons to why
Recent literature reports that there is a nursing shortage and it is continually increasing. Data released by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (2011) projects that the shortage, would increase to 260,000 by the year 2025. AACN (2011) also reported that 13% of newly registered nurses changed jobs and 37% were ready to change within a year. A study conducted reports that there is a correlation between higher nursing workloads and nurse burnout, retention rates, job dissatisfaction and adverse patient outcomes (Vahey & Aiken, 2004). Among the nurses surveyed in the study, over 40% stated that they were suffering from burnout while 1 in 5 nurses intended
The rate of errors and situations are seen as chances for improvement. A great degree of preventable adversative events and medical faults happen. They cause injury to patients and their loved ones. Events are possibly able to occur in all types of settings. Innovations and strategies have been created to identify hazards to progress patient and staff safety. Nurses are dominant to providing an atmosphere and values of safety. As an outcome, nurses are becoming safety leaders in the healthcare environment(Utrich&Kear,
Solutions for the nursing shortage beyond implementing safe nurse staffing ratios include: ongoing long-term workforce planning; institution of an education and practice system to promote more equitable compensation in the health care community based on a better understanding of the educational preparation required for different health care roles; implementation of specific strategies to retain experienced nurses in the provision of direct patient care, investigating the potential for using technological advances to enhance the capacity of a reduced nursing workforce; and advocate for increased nursing education funding under Title VIII of the Public Health Service Act and other publicly funded initiatives to improve
It is right of a patient to be safe at health care organization. Patient comes to the hospital for the treatment not to get another disease. Patient safety is the most important issue for health care organizations. Patient safety events cost of thousands of deaths and millions of dollars an-nually. Even though the awareness of patient safety is spreading worldwide but still we have to accomplish many things to achieve safe environment for patients in the hospitals. Proper admin-istrative changes are required to keep health care organization safe. We need organizational changes, effective leadership, strong health care policies and effective health care laws to make patients safer.
Coleman, S. A. (2014). Protecting yourself against surgical smoke. OR Nurse 2014, 8(2), 40-46. Retrieved April 18, 2014, from http://journals.lww.com/ornursejournal/Fulltext/2014/03000/Protecting_yourself_against_surgical_smoke.9.aspx